“Are you ready, dear?”
She listened for a moment, and called out again:
“Clare!”
Herbert poured some more whisky into the decanter.
“I expect she’s reading one of those beastly pamphlets,” he said.
Mrs. Heywood tapped at the bedroom door.
“Clare!”
“Go in, mother,” said Herbert irritably.
“It’s very strange!” said Mrs. Heywood in an anxious voice.
She went into the bedroom, and Herbert, who had been watching her, spilled some of the whisky, so that he muttered to himself:
“What with women and what with whisky——”
He did not finish his sentence, but stared in the direction of the bedroom as though suspecting something was wrong.
Mrs. Heywood came trembling out. She had a scared look.
“Oh, Herbert!”
Herbert was alarmed by the look on her face.
“Is Clare ill—or something?”
“She isn’t there,” said Mrs. Heywood.
The old lady was rather breathless.
“Not there!” said Herbert in a dazed way.
“She went in to dress a few minutes ago,” said his mother.
Herbert stared at her. He was really very much afraid, but he spoke irritably:
“Well, she can’t have gone up the chimney, can she? At least, I suppose not, though you never can tell nowadays.”
He strode toward the bedroom door and called out:
“Clare!”
Then he went inside.
Mrs. Heywood stood watching the open door. She raised her hands up and then let them fall, and spoke in a hoarse kind of whisper:
“I think it has happened at last.”
Herbert came out of the bedroom again. He looked pale, and had gloomy eyes.
“It’s devilish queer!” he said.
Mother and son stood looking at each other, as though in the presence of tragedy.
“She must have gone out,” said Mrs. Hey-wood.
“Gone out! What makes you think so?”
“She has taken her hat and cloak.”
“How do you know?” asked Herbert.
“I looked in the wardrobe.”
“Good Heavens! Where’s she gone to?”
Mrs. Heywood’s thin old hands clutched at the white lace upon her bosom.
“Herbert, I—I am afraid.”
The man went deadly white. He stammered as he spoke:
“You don’t mean that she is going to do something—foolish?”
“Something rash,” said Mrs. Hey wood mournfully.
Herbert had a sudden idea. It took away from his fear a little and made him angry.
“Perhaps she has gone round to church. If so, I will give her a piece of my mind when she comes back. It’s outrageous! It’s shameful.”
There was the sound of a bell ringing through the hall, and the mother and son listened intently.
“Perhaps shehascome back,” said Herbert. “Perhaps she went to fetch some flowers.” This idea seemed to soften him. His voice broke a little when he said: “Poor girl! I didn’t mean to make such a fuss about them.” “It isn’t Clare,” said Mrs. Heywood, shaking her head. “It’s a visitor. I hear Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice.”
Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice could be heard quite plainly in the hall:
“Well, Mollie, is your mistress quite well?” Herbert grasped his mother’s arm and whispered to her excitedly:
“Mother, we must hide it from them.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “If the Atkinson Browns suspect anything it will be all over the neighborhood.”
Herbert had a look of anguish in his eyes. “Good Heavens, yes. My reputation will be ruined.”
Once again they heard Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice in the hall.
“I see we are the first to arrive,” he said in a loud, cheery tone.
“Mother,” whispered Herbert, “we must keep up appearances, at all costs.”
“I’ll try to, darling,” said Mrs. Heywood, clasping his arm for a moment.
Herbert made a desperate effort to be hopeful.
“Clare is sure to be back in a few minutes. We’re frightening ourselves for nothing.... I shall have something to say to her to-night when the guests are gone.”
Mrs. Heywood’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked at her son as though she knew that Clare would never come back.
“My poor boy!” she said.
“Play the game, mother,” said Herbert. “For Heaven’s sake play the game.”
He had no sooner whispered these words than Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson Brown entered the room, having taken off their outdoor things. Mr. Brown was a tall, stout, heavily built man with a bald head and a great expanse of white waistcoat. His wife was a little bird-like woman in pink silk. They were both elaborately cheerful.
“Hulloh, Heywood, my boy!” said the elderly man.
“So delighted to come!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown to Herbert’s mother.
Herbert grasped the man’s hand and wrung it warmly.
“Good of you to come. Devilish good.”
“Glad to come,” said Mr. Atkinson Brown. “Glad to come, my lad. How’s the wife?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown, glancing round the room. “Where’s dear Clare?... Well, I hope.”
Herbert tried to hide his extreme nervousness.
“Oh, tremendously fit, thanks. She’ll be here in a minute or two.”
Mrs. Heywood appeared less nervous than her son. Yet her voice trembled a little when she said:
“Do sit down, Mrs. Atkinson Brown.”
She pulled a chair up, but the lady protested laughingly:
“Oh, not so near the fire. I can’t afford to neglect my complexion at my time of life!”
Her husband was rubbing his hands in front of the fire. He had no complexion to spoil.
“Horrible weather for this time o’ year,” he said.
“Damnable,” said Herbert, agreeing with him almost too cordially.
“Is dear Clare suited at present?” asked the lady.
“Well,” said Mrs. Heywood, “we still have Mollie, but she is a great trouble—a very great trouble.”
“Oh, the eternal servant problem!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I thought I had a perfect jewel, but I found her inebriated in the kitchen only yesterday.”
Herbert was racking his brains for conversational subjects. He fell back on an old one. “Business going strong?”
“Business!” said Mr. Atkinson Brown. “My dear boy, business has been the very devil since this Radical Government has been in power.”
“I am sure there has been a great deal of trouble in the world lately,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“I’m sure I can’t bear to read even the dearDaily Mail,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
“What with murders and revolutions and eloping vicars and suffragettes——”
“Those outrageous women ought to be whipped,” said her husband. “Spoiled my game of golf last Saturday. Found ‘Votes for Women’ on the first green. Made me positively ill.”
“I am glad dear Clare is so sensible,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
“Yes. Oh, quite so,” said Mrs. Heywood, flushing a little.
“Oh, rather!” said Herbert.
“We domestic women are in the minority now,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
“The spirit of revolt is abroad, Herbert,” said her husband. “Back to the Home is the only watchword which will save the country from these shameless hussies. Flog ‘em back, I would. Thank Godourwives have more sense.”
“Yes, there’s something in that,” said Herbert.
Mrs. Atkinson Brown was gazing round the room curiously. She seemed to suspect something.
“You are sure dear Clare is quite well?” she asked. “No little trouble?”
“She is having a slight trouble with her back hair,” said Herbert. “Won’t lie down, you know.”
He laughed loudly, as though he had made a good joke.
Mrs. Atkinson Brown half rose from her chair.
“Oh, let me go to the rescue of the dear thing!”
Herbert was terror-stricken.
“No—no! It was only my joke,” he said eagerly. “She will be here in a minute. Do sit down.”
Mrs. Heywood remembered her promise to “play the game.”
“Won’t you sing something, dear?” she said to her visitor.
“Oh, not so early in the evening,” said the lady. “Besides, I have a most awful cold.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Herbert. “I am beastly sorry.”
As he spoke the bell rang again, and Herbert went over to his mother and whispered to her:
“Do you think that is Clare? My God, this is awful!”
“Clare was not looking very well the other day when I saw her,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I thought perhaps she was sickening for something.”
“Oh, I assure you she was never better in her life,” said Herbert.
“But you men are so unobservant. I am dying to see dear Clare, to ask her how she feels. Are you sure I can’t be of any use to her?”
She rose again from her chair, and Herbert gave a beseeching look to his mother.
“Oh, quite sure, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Dosit down.”
“Besides, you have such a frightful cold,” said Herbert, with extreme anxiety. “Dokeep closer to the fire.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown laughed a little curiously:
“You seem very anxious to keep me from dear Clare!”
This persistence annoyed her husband and he rebuked her sternly.
“Sit still, Beatrice, can’t you? Don’t you see that we have arrived a little early and that we have taken Clare unawares? Let the poor girl go on with her dressing.”
“Don’t bully me in other people’s flats, Charles,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I have enough of it at home.”
Her husband was not to be quelled.
“Herbert and I can hardly hear ourselves speak,” he growled, “you keep up such a clatter.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown flared up.
“I come out to get the chance of speaking a little. For eight years now I have been listening to your interminable monologues, and can’t get a word in edgeways.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said her husband.
“Have you been married eight years already, my dear?” asked Mrs. Heywood in a tone of amiable surprise.
“Well, we are in our Eighth Year,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
Mrs. Heywood seemed startled.
“Oh, I see,” she said thoughtfully.
“I assure you it seems longer,” said the lady. “I suppose it’s because Charles makes me so very tired sometimes.”
Two other visitors now arrived. They were Mr. Hargreaves and his wife: the former a young man in immaculate evening clothes, with lofty manners; the latter a tall, thin, elegant, bored-looking woman, supercilious and snobbish.
Herbert went forward hurriedly to his new guests.
“How splendid of you to come! How are you, sir?”
“Oh, pretty troll-loll, thanks,” said Mr. Hargreaves.
Herbert shook hands with Mrs. Hargreaves.
“How do you do?”
“We’re rather late,” said the lady, “but this is in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, is it not?”
“Oh, do you think so?” said Herbert. “I always considered Battersea Park very central.”
Mrs. Hargreaves raised her eyebrows.
“It’s having to get across the river that makes the journey so very tedious. I should die if I had to live across the river.”
“There’s something in what you say,” said Herbert, anxious to agree with everybody. “I must apologize for dragging you all this way. Of course, you people in Mayfair——Won’t you sit down?”
Mr. Hargreaves became a victim of mistaken identity, shaking hands with Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
“Mrs. Heywood, I presume. I must introduce myself.”
Mrs. Hargreaves also greeted the other lady, under the same impression.
“Oh, how do you do? So delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown was much amused, and laughed gaily.
“But I amnotMrs. Heywood. I cannot boast of such a handsome husband!”
“Oh, can’t you, by Jove!” said Mr. Atkinson Brown, rather nettled by his wife’s candor.
“Oh, I beg pardon,” said Mr. Hargreaves. “WhereisMrs. Heywood?”
“Yes, where is Mrs. Heywood?” said his wife.
Herbert looked wildly at his mother.
“Where is she, mother? Do tell her to hurry up.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood meekly. She moved uncertainly toward the bedroom door, and then hesitated: “Perhaps she will not be very long now.”
“The fact is,” said Herbert desperately, “she is not very well.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown was astounded.
“But you said she was perfectly well!”
“Did I?” said Herbert. “Oh, well, er—one has to say these things, you know. Polite fictions, eh?”
He laughed nervously.
“The fact is, she has a little headache. Hasn’t she, mother?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. “You know best.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown rose from her chair again.
“Oh, I will go and see how the poor dear feels. So bad of you to hide it from us.”
“Oh, please sit down,” said Herbert in a voice of anguish. “I assure you it is nothing very much. She will be in directly. Make yourself at home, Mrs. Hargreaves. This chair? Mother, show Mrs. Atkinson Brown Clare’s latest photograph.”
“Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Heywood. “It is an excellent likeness.”
“But I want to see Clare herself!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown plaintively.
“Sit down, Beatrice!” said her husband.
“Bully!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown, sitting down with a flop.
Herbert addressed himself to Mr. Hargreaves.
“Draw up your chair, sir. You will have a cigar, I am sure.”
He offered him one from a newly opened box. Mr. Hargreaves took one, smelled it, and then put it back.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I will have one of my own, if I may. Sure the ladies don’t mind?”
“Oh, they like it,” said Herbert.
“We have to pretend to,” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
“Well, if you don’t, you ought to,” said her husband. “It’s a man’s privilege.”
Mrs. Hargreaves smiled icily.
“One of his many privileges.”
“Will you have a cigarette, Mrs. Hargreaves?” said Herbert.
But Mr. Hargreaves interposed:
“Oh, I don’t allow my wife to smoke. It’s a beastly habit.”
Mr. Atkinson Brown, who had accepted one of Herbert’s cigars, but after some inquiry had also decided to smoke one of his own, applauded this sentiment with enthusiasm.
“Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Disgusting habit for women.”
“Of course I agree with you,” said Herbert. “Clare never smokes. But I don’t lay down the law for other people’s wives.”
Mr. Hargreaves laughed.
“A very sound notion, Heywood. It takes all one’s time to manage one’s own, eh?”
“And then it is not always effective,” said his wife. “Even the worm will turn.”
Mr. Hargreaves answered his wife with a heavy retort:
“If it does I knock it on the head with a spade.”
Mr. Atkinson Brown laughed loudly again. He seemed to like this man Hargreaves.
“Good epigram! By Jove, I must remember that!”
Herbert was on tenter-hooks when the conversation languished a little.
“Won’t you sing a song, Mrs. Atkinson Brown? I am sure my friend, Mr. Hargreaves, will appreciate your voice.”
“Oh, rather!” said Hargreaves. “Though I don’t pretend to understand a note of music.” Mrs. Atkinson Brown shook her head:
“I couldn’t think of singing before our hostess appears.”
The lady’s husband seemed at last to have caught the spirit of her suspicion. He spoke in a hoarse whisper to his wife:
“Where the devilisthe woman?”
Herbert Heywood realized that he was on the edge of a precipice. Not much longer could he hold on to this intolerable situation. He tried to speak cheerfully, but there was anguish in his voice when he said:
“Well, let’s have a game of nap.”
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Hargreaves. “I only play nap on the way to a race. You don’t sport a billiard table, do you?”
Herbert Heywood was embarrassed.
“Er—a billiard table?” He looked round the room as though he might discover a billiard table. “I’m afraid not.”
“Don’t be absurd, Edward,” said Mrs. Hargreaves. “People don’t play billiards on the wrong side of the river.”
Conversation languished again, and Herbert was becoming desperate. He seized upon the sandwiches and handed them round.
“Won’t anybody have a sandwich to pass the time away? Mrs. Hargreaves?”
Mrs. Hargreaves laughed in her supercilious way.
“It’s rather early, isn’t it?”
“Good Lord, no!” said Herbert. “I am sure you must be hungry. Let me beg of you—Mother, haven’t you got any cake anywhere?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. She, too, was suffering mental tortures.
“Atkinson Brown. You will have a sandwich,” said Herbert.
He bent over to his visitor and spoke in a gloomy voice:
“Take one, for God’s sake.”
Atkinson Brown was startled.
“Yes! Yes! By all means,” he said hastily. Herbert handed the sandwiches about rather wildly. “Mother, you will have one, won’t you? Mrs. Atkinson Brown?... And one for me, eh?”
Mrs. Hargreaves eyed her host curiously.
“I hope your wife is not seriously unwell, Mr. Heywood.”
Herbert was losing his nerve.
“Can’t we talk of something else?” he said despairingly. “What is your handicap at golf?”
“My husband objects to my playing golf,” said the lady.
“It takes women out of the home so much,” said Hargreaves. “Play with the babies is my motto for women.”
Mrs. Atkinson Brown shook her finger at him, and laughed in a shrill voice:
“But supposing they haven’t got any babies?”
“They ought to have ‘em,” said Hargreaves.
It was Atkinson Brown who interrupted this interesting discussion, which promised to bring up the great problem of eugenics, so favored now as a drawing-room topic. He had been turning his sandwich this way and that, and he leaned forward to his host:
“Excuse me, Herbert, old man. There’s something the matter with this sandwich.”
“Something the matter with it?” asked Herbert anxiously.
“It’s covered with red spots,” said Atkinson Brown.
“Spots—what kind of spots?”
“Looks like blood,” said Atkinson Brown, giving an uneasy guffaw. “Suppose there hasn’t been a murder in this flat?”
All the guests leaned forward and gazed at the sandwich.
Herbert spoke in a tragic whisper to his mother:
“Mollie’s finger!”
Then he explained the matter airily to the general company.
“Oh, it’s a special kind of sandwich with the gravy outside. A new fad, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” said Atkinson Brown, much relieved. “Hadn’t heard of it. Still, I think I’ll have an ordinary one, if you don’t mind.”
Herbert was muttering little prayers remembered from his childhood.
“Mrs. Hargreaves,” he said cajolingly, “I am sure you play. Won’t you give us a little tune?”
“Well, if it won’t disturb your wife,” said the lady.
“Oh, I am sure it won’t. She’ll love to hear you.”
He felt immensely grateful to this good-natured woman.
“Edward, get my music-roll,” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
But Herbert had a horrible disappointment when Hargreaves said:
“By Jove! I believe I left it in the taxi. Yes, I am sure I did!”
Herbert put his hand up to his aching head and whispered his anguish:
“Oh, my God! Now how shall I mark time?”
“But I reminded you about it!” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
“Yes, I know. But you are always reminding me about something.”
“Well, play something by heart,” said Herbert in a pleading way. “Any old thing. The five-finger exercises.”
“I am very out of practice,” said Mrs. Hargreaves. “But still I will try.”
Herbert breathed a prayer of thankfulness, and hurried to conduct the lady to the music-stool.
As he did so there was a noise outside the window. Newspaper men were shouting their sing-song: “Raid on the ‘Ouse. Suffragette Outrage. Raid on the ‘Ouse of Commins.”
“What are the devils saying?” asked Hargreaves, trying to catch the words.
“Something about the Suffragettes,” growled Atkinson Brown.
“I’m afraid it will give poor Clare a worse headache,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
Mrs. Heywood tried to be reassuring:
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
At that moment there was a loud ring at the bell. The sound was so prolonged that it startled the company.
Herbert listened intently and then whispered to his mother:
“That must be Clare!”
“Oh, if it is only Clare!” said Mrs. Heywood. When Mrs. Hargreaves had struck a few soft chords on the piano there was the sound of voices speaking loudly in the hall. Everybody listened, surprised at the interruption. Mollie’s voice could be heard quite clearly.
“I told you it was our At Home night, Miss Vernon.”
“I can’t help that.”
The drawing-room door opened,sans ceremonie, and Madge Vernon came in. Her face was flushed, and she had sparkling eyes. She stood in the doorway looking at the company with a smile, as though immensely amused by some joke of her own.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you good people,” she said very cheerfully, “but I have come on urgent business, which brooks no delay, as they say in melodrama.”
Mrs. Heywood gazed at her with frightened eyes.
“My dear!... What has happened?”
“What’s the matter?” said Herbert, turning very pale.
“Oh, it’s nothing to be alarmed at,” said Madge Vernon. “It’s about your wife.”
“My wife?”
“About Clare?” exclaimed Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
Mrs. Hargreaves craned her head forward, like a bird reaching for its seed.
“I wonder—” she said.
Madge Vernon grinned at them all.
“It’ll be in the papers to-morrow, so you are all bound to know. Besides, why keep it a secret? It’s a thing to be proud of!”
“Proud of what?” asked Herbert in a frenzied tone of voice.
Madge Vernon enjoyed the drama of her announcement.
“Clare has been arrested in a demonstration outside the House to-night.”
“Arrested!”
The awful word was spoken almost simultaneously by all the company in that drawingroom of Intellectual Mansions, S. W.
“She’s quite safe,” said Madge Vernon calmly. “I’ve come to ask you to bail her out.”
Herbert’s guests rose and looked at him in profound astonishment and indignation.
“But you told us—” cried Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
Herbert Heywood gave a queer groan of anger and horror.
“Bail her out!... Oh, my God!”
He sank down into his chair and held his head in his hands.
Herbert Heywood was in the depths of an arm-chair reading the paper. Mrs. Heywood was on the other side of the fireplace with a book on her lap. But she was dozing over it, and her head nodded on to her chest. Herbert turned over the leaves of the paper and then studied the advertisements. He had a look of extreme boredom. Every now and then he yawned quietly and lengthily. At last he let the paper fall on to the floor, and uttered his thoughts aloud, so that his mother was awakened.
“Did you say anything, Herbert?” said the old lady.
“Nothing, mother, except that I am bored stiff.”
He went over to the piano and played “God Save the King” with one finger, in a doleful way.
Mrs. Heywood glanced over her spectacles at him.
“Would you like a game of cribbage, dear?”
“No, thanks, mother,” said Herbert hastily. “Not in the afternoon.”
Mrs. Heywood listened to his fumbling notes for a moment and then spoke again.
“Won’t you go out for a walk? It would do you good, Herbert.”
“Think so?” said Herbert bitterly; without accepting the suggestion, he played “Three Blind Mice,” also with one finger. It sounded more melancholy than “God Save the King.”
“I don’t like to see you moping indoors on a bright day like this,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Take a brisk walk round the Park. It would cheer you up.”
Herbert resented the idea fiercely.
“A long walk in Battersea Park would make a pessimist of a laughing hyena.”
Mrs. Heywood was silent for some time, but then she made a last effort.
“Well, go and see a friend, dear. The Atkinson Browns, for instance.”
“They do nothing but nag at each other,” said Herbert. “And Atkinson Brown hasn’t as much brains as a Teddy Bear. Besides, he’s become friendly with that fellow Hargreaves, and I’m not going to take the risk of meeting a man who turned me out of my job.”
Mrs. Heywood became agitated.
“Are you sure of that, Herbert? I can’t think he could have been so malicious, after coming here and eating your salt, as it were. What was his reason?”
“He made no disguise of it,” said Herbert bitterly. “I saw his letter to my chief. Said that it was quite impossible to employ a man who was mixed up with the militant Suffragettes. Damned liar!”
“Good Heavens!” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Of course it was all due to that ghastly evening when Clare got arrested. She knows that well enough.”
“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, “she has tried to make amends. The shock of your losing your place has made her much more gentle and loving. It has brought back all her loyalty to you, Herbert.”
“Loyalty!” said Herbert. “Where is she now, I should like to know?”
“She is gone to some committee meeting.”
“She’s always got a committee meeting,” said Herbert angrily, kicking the hassock.
“She joins a new committee for some kind of social reform nonsense every blessed day.”
“Well, it keeps her busy, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood gently. “Besides, it is not all committee work. Since she has been visiting the poor and helping in the slums she has been ever so much better in health and spirits.”
“Yes, but where the devil do I come in?” asked Herbert.
“Don’t you think you might go out, dear? Just for a little while?”
“I don’twantto go out, mother,” said Herbert with suppressed heat.
“Very well, dear.”
Herbert stood in front of the fireplace and rattled the keys in his pocket moodily.
“What’s the good of toiling to keep a home together if one’s wife abandons her husband’s society on every possible pretext? A home! This place is just a receiving office for begging letters and notices for committees and subcommittees.”
Mrs. Heywood sighed.
“It might have been worse, Herbert.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t be worse. I’m the most miserable wretch in London. Without a job and without a wife.”
“You’ll get a place all right, dear. You have the promise of one already. And you know Clare’s health was in a very queer state before Miss Vernon made her take an interest in helping other people. I was seriously alarmed about her.”
“What about me?” asked Herbert. “No one troubles to get alarmed about me.”
“Are you unwell, dear?” said Mrs. Hey-wood anxiously.
“Of course I’m unwell.”
“Darling!” said Mrs. Heywood, still more anxiously.
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with me from a physical point of view. But mentally and morally I’m a demnition wreck.”
“Aren’t you taking your iron pills regularly?” said his mother.
“Pills! As if pills could cure melancholia!” Mrs. Heywood was aghast at that dreadful word.
“Good Heavens, dear!”
“I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” said Herbert.
“Oh, Herbert,” cried his mother, “I hope not!”
“I’m working up to a horrible crisis,” said Herbert.
“What are your symptoms? How do you feel?” asked his mother.
“I feel like smashing things,” said Herbert savagely.
He sat down at the piano again and played “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning,” but missed his note, and banged on to the wrong one in a temper.
“There goes a note, anyhow. Thank goodness for that!”
At that moment Mollie came in holding a silver tray with a pile of letters.
“The post, sir.”
“Well, something to break the infernal monotony,” said Herbert with a sigh of relief.
He took up the letters and examined them.
“Life is a bit flat, sir,” said Mollie, “since we gave up having At Homes.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Herbert.
Mollie tossed her head and muttered an impertinent sentence as she left the room.
“Can’t even open my mouth without somebody jumping down my throat. I will break that girl’s neck one of these days,” said Herbert.
He went through the letters and read out the names on them.
“Mrs. Herbert Heywood,Mrs.Herbert Heywood, Mrs. Herbert Heywood, Mrs. Herbert—Why, every jack one is for Mrs. Herbert Heywood! Nobody writes to me, of course. No one cares a damn aboutme.”
“Your mother cares, Herbert,” said the old lady.
“I shall take to drink—or the devil,” said Herbert, and he added thoughtfully, “I wonder which is the most fun?”
“Herbert, dear!” cried his mother, “don’t say such awful things.”
“The worst of it is,” said Herbert bitterly, “they’re both so beastly expensive.”
There was the noise of a latchkey in the hall, and Mrs. Heywood gave a little cry.
“There’s Clare!”
“Think so?” said Herbert, listening.
From the hall came the sound of Clare’s voice singing a merry tune.
“She’s in a cheerful mood, anyhow,” said Mrs. Heywood, smiling.
Herbert answered her gloomily.
“Horribly cheerful.”
The mother and son looked toward the door as Clare came in. There was a noticeable change in her appearance since the evening At Home. There was more color in her cheeks and the wistfulness had gone out of her eyes. She was brisk, keen and bright.
“Well, mother,” she said, “been having a nap?”
“Oh, no, dear,” said the old lady, who never admitted that she made a habit of naps.
“Hulloh, Herbert,” said Clare. “Have you got that new post yet?”
“No,” said Herbert. “And I don’t expect I shall get it.”
“Oh, yes, you will, dear old boy. Don’t you worry! Have you been home long?”
“Seems like a lifetime.”
Clare laughed.
“Not so long as that, surely?”
She came forward to him and put her arm about his neck, and offered him her cheek. He looked at it doubtfully for a moment and then kissed her in a “distant” manner.
“I’m frightfully busy, old boy,” said Clare. “I just have a few minutes and then I shall have to dash off again.”
“Dash off where?” asked Herbert, with signs of extreme irritation. “Dash it all, surely you aren’t going out again?”
“Only round the corner,” said Clare quietly. “I have got to look into the case of a poor creature who is making match-boxes. Goodness knows how many for a farthing! And yet she’s so cheerful and plucky that it does one good to see her. Oh, it kills one’s own selfishness, Herbert.”
“Well, why worry about her, then, if she’s so pleased with herself?”
“She’s plucky,” said Clare, “but she’s starving. It’s a bad case of sweated labor.”
“Sweated humbug,” said Herbert. “What am I going to do all the evening, I should like to know? Sit here alone?”
“I don’t suppose I shall be long,” said Clare. “Besides, there’s mother.”
“Yes, there’s mother,” said Herbert. “But when a man’s married he wants his wife.”
Clare was now busy looking over her letters.
“Can’t you go to the club?” she asked.
“I’m dead sick of the club. That boiled-shirt Bohemianism is the biggest rot in the world.”
“Take mother to the theatre,” said Clare cheerfully.
“The theatre bores me stiff. These modern plays set one’s nerves on edge.”
“Well, haven’t you got a decent novel or anything?” said Clare, reading one of her letters.
“A decent novel! There’s no such thing nowadays, and they give me the hump.”
Clare was reading another letter with absorbed interest, but she listened with half an ear, as it were, to her husband.
“Play mother a game of cribbage, then,” she said.
“Look here, Clare,” said Herbert furiously, “I shall begin to throw things about in a minute.”
“Don’t get hysterical, Herbert,” said Clare calmly. “Especially as I have got some good news for you.”
As she spoke these words she looked across a Demonstration to him with a curious smile and added: “A big surprise, Herbert!”
“A surprise?” said Herbert with sarcasm. “Have you discovered another widow in distress?”
“Well, I have,” said Clare, “but it’s not that.”
Mrs. Heywood glanced from her son to her daughter-in-law, and seemed to imagine that she might be disturbing an intimate conversation.
“I will be back in a minute. I won’t disturb you two dears,” she said, as she left the room quietly.
“You won’t disturb us, mother,” said Clare.
But the old lady smiled and said, “I won’t be long.”
“Are you going to get arrested again?” asked Herbert. “Do you want me to bail you out? Because by the Lord, I won’t!”
“Oh, that was quite an accident,” said Clare, laughing. “Besides, I gave you my word to abstain from the militant movement, and you can’t say I have broken the pledge.”
“You have broken a good many other things.”
“What kind of things?” asked Clare. “You aren’t alluding to that window again, are you?”
“You have broken my illusions on married life,” said Herbert, with tragic emphasis.
“Ah,” said Clare, “that is ‘the Great Illusion,’ by the Angel in the House.”
“You have broken my ideals of womanhood.”
“They were false ideals, Herbert,” said Clare very quietly. “It was only a plaster ideal which broke. The real woman is of flesh and blood. The real woman is so much better than the sham. Don’t you think so?”
“It depends on what you call sham,” said Herbert.
“I was a sham until that plaster image of me broke. I indulged in sham sentiment, sham emotion, sham thoughts. Look at me now, since I went outside these four walls and faced the facts of life, and saw other people’s misery besides my own, and the happiness of people with so much more to bear than I had. Look into my eyes, Herbert.”
She smiled at him tenderly, alluringly. “What’s the good?” said Herbert.
“Do you see a weary soul looking out?”
Herbert looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment and then stared down at the carpet.
“I used to see love looking out,” he said.
“It’s looking out now,” said Clare. “Love of life instead of discontent. Love of this great throbbing human nature, with so much to be put right. Love of poor people, and little children, and brave hearts. Madge Vernon taught me that, for she has a soul bigger than the suffrage, and ideals that go beyond the vote. I have blown the cobwebs out of my eyes, Herbert. I see straight.”
“How aboutme?” asked Herbert. “That’s what I want to know. Where do I come in?”
“Oh, you come in all right!” said Clare. “You are a part of life and have a big share of my love.”
“I don’t want to be shared up, thanks,” said Herbert.
She stroked his hand.
“I love you much better now that I see you with this new straight vision of mine. At any rate I love what is real in you and not what is sham. And I have learned the duties of love, Herbert. I believe I am a better wife to you. I think I have learned the meaning of marriage, and of married love.”
She spoke with a touch of emotion, and there was a thrill in her voice.
“You are in love with your social work and your whining beggars, not with me. You are getting farther and farther away from me. You leave me alone; I come back to a neglected home.”
“Why, Mollie and mother look after it beautifully,” said Clare very cheerfully.
Herbert gave expression to his grievances.
“I come home and ask, ‘Where is Clare?’ and get the eternal answer, ‘Clare is out.’ I am an abandoned husband, and by Heaven I won’t stand it. I will——”
“What, Herbert?” said Clare, smiling up at him. “Don’t do anything rash, old boy.”
“I—have a good mind to make love to somebody else’s wife. But they’re all so beastly ugly!”
“Perhaps somebody else’s wife won’t respond,” said Clare. “Some women are very cold.”
“I’ll take to drink. I have already given mother full warning.”
“I am sure it will disagree with you, dear,” said Clare.
“You scoff at me,” said Herbert passionately. “I think we had better live apart.”
“You would get even more bored than before. Dear old boy.Dobe reasonable.Docultivate a sense of humor.”
“This is not a farce,” said Herbert. “It’s a horrible tragedy.”
“Take up a hobby or something,” said Clare. “Golf—or fretwork.”
Herbert was furious.
“Fretwork! Is that a joke or an insult?”
“It was only a suggestion!” said Clare. Herbert jumped up from his chair.
“I had better go and drown myself straight away...”?
He turned at the door, and gave a tragic look at his wife. “Good-by.”
Clare smiled at him.
“Won’t you kiss me before you go?”
“I will take my pipe,” said Herbert, coming back to the mantelshelf. “It’s my only friend.”
“It will go out in the water,” said Clare. “Besides, Herbert, don’t you want to hear my good news? My big surprise?”
“No,” said Herbert. “Nothing you could say or do could surprise me now. If mother wants me I shall be in the study for the rest of the evening.”
“But I thought you were going to the river?”, said Clare teasingly.
Herbert was not to be amused.
“I suppose you think you’re funny? I don’t,” he said.
Then he went out and slammed the door. Clare was left alone, and there was a smile about her lips.
“Poor old Herbert,” she said. “I think he will have the surprise of his life.”
She laughed quietly to herself, and then looked up and listened as she heard a slight noise. She stood up with a sudden look of anger as she saw Gerald Bradshaw gazing at her through the open French windows.
The man spoke to her in his soft, silky voice.
“Clare, why are you so cruel to me? I have been ill because of your heartlessness.”
Clare answered him sternly.
“I thought I had got rid of you. Have you come back to plague me?”
“I tried to forget you,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “I went as far as Italy to forget you. I made love to many women to forget you. But I have come back. And I shall always come back, because you are my mate and I cannot live without you.”
Clare’s voice rang out in the room.
“God ought not to let you live. Every word you speak is a lie. You are a thief of women’s honor. Get away from my window, because your very breath is poison.”
The man was astonished, a little scared. “You did not speak like that once, Clare. You let me hold your hand. You trembled when I leaned toward you.”
“I was ill and weak,” said Clare, “and you tried to tempt my weakness. I was blind and did not see the evil in you. But now I am well and strong, and my eyes are opened to the truth of things. If you don’t go I will call my husband and he will throw you over that balcony at one word from me.”
Gerald Bradshaw laughed scoffingly.
“Your husband! I could kill him between my thumb and forefinger.”
“He is strong because he is good,” said Clare. “I will call him now.”
She went quickly toward the bell.
“You needn’t call him,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “I would dislike to hurt the little man.”
“You are going?” asked Clare.
“Yes, I am going,” said the man, “because something has changed in you.”
Clare gave a cheerful little laugh.
“You are right.”
“I see that now. I have lost my spell over you. Something has broken.”
“Are you going,” said Clare sternly, “or shall I call my man?”
“I am going, Clare,” said the man at the window. “I am going to find another mate. She and I will talk evil of you, and hate you, as I hate you now. Farewell, foolish one!” He withdrew from the window, and instantly Clare rushed to it, shut it and bolted it. Then she pulled down the blind, and stood, panting, with her back to it and her arms outstretched.
“God be praised!” she said. “He has gone out of my life. I am a clean woman again.” At that moment Mrs. Heywood entered. “Must you go out again, Clare?” said the old lady.
“Only for a little while, mother,” said Clare, a little breathless after her emotion.
“Is anything the matter, dear?” said Mrs. Heywood. “You look rather flustered.”
“Oh, nothing is the matter!” said Clare. “Only I am very happy.”
Mrs. Heywood smiled at her.
“It makes me happy to see you so well and bright,” she said.
“I don’t get on your nerves so much, eh, mother?”
She laughed quietly.
“Well, I must go and tidy my hair.”
She moved toward the bedroom, but stopped to pack up her letters.
“I am so sorry you have to go out,” said the old lady.
“I shan’t be more than a few minutes,” said Clare. “But I must go. Besides, after this I am going togiveup some of my visiting work.”
“Give it up, dear?”
“Yes. One must be moderate even in district visiting.”
She went into the bedroom, but left the door open so that she could hear her mother.
“Clare!” said the old lady.
“Yes, mother.”
“What is that surprise you were going to give us?”
“Surprise, mother?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “The good news?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said Clare. “Come in and I will tell you.”
Mrs. Heywood went into the bedroom. Outside, in the street, a man with a fiddle was playing the “Intermezzo.” Presently both women came out. Clare was smiling, with her arm round Mrs. Heywood’s neck. Mrs. Heywood was wiping her eyes as though crying a little.
“Cheer up,” said Clare. “It’s nothing to cry about.”
“I am crying because I am so glad,” said Mrs. Heywood.
“Well, that’s a funny thing to do,” said Clare, laughing gaily. “Now I must run away. You won’t let Herbert drown himself, will you?”
“No, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, wiping her eyes.
“Who would have thought it!” said Mrs.
Heywood, speaking to herself as her daughter-in-law left the room.
She went over to the mantelpiece and took up her son’s photograph and kissed it. Then she went to the door and stood out in the hall and called in a sweet old woman’s voice:
“Herbert! Herbert, dear!”
“Are you calling, mother?” answered Herbert from another room.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I want you.”
“I don’t feel a bit like cribbage, mother,”’ said Herbert.
“I don’t want you to play cribbage to-night,” said the old lady. “I have something to say to you.”
“Has Clare gone?” asked Herbert, still calling from the other room.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “But she won’t be long.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll be along in a moment.”
Mrs. Heywood went back into the room and waited for her son eagerly. Presently he came in with a pipe in his hand and book under his arm. He had changed into a shabby old jacket, and was in carpet slippers.
“What’s the matter, mother?” he asked.
“There’s nothing the matter,” said the old lady; then she became very excited, and raised her hands and cried out:
“At least, everything is the matter. It’s the only thing that matters! ... Oh, Herbert!”
She laughed and cried at the same time so that her son was alarmed and stared at her in amazement.
“You aren’t ill, are you?” he said. “Shall I send for a doctor?”
Mrs. Heywood shook her trembling old head.
“I’m quite well. I never felt so well.”
“You had better sit down, mother,” said Herbert.
He took her hand and led her to a chair.
“What’s up, eh, old lady? Mollie hasn’t run away, has she?”
The old lady took his hand and fondled it.
“Herbert, my son, I’ve wonderful news for you.”
“News?” said Herbert. “Did you find it in the evening paper?”
“It’s going to make a lot of difference to us all,” said Mrs. Heywood. “No more cribbage, Herbert!”
“Thank heaven for that!” said Herbert.
“And not so much social work for Clare.”
“Well, let’s be thankful for small mercies,” said Herbert.
“Bend your head down and let me whisper to you,” said Mrs. Heywood.
She put her hands up to his head, and drew it down, and whispered something into his ears.
It was something which astounded him.
He started back and said “No!” as though he had heard something quite incredible. Then he spoke in a whisper:
“By Jove!... Is that a fact?”
“It’s the best fact that ever was, Herbert,” said the old lady.
“Yes... it will make a bit of a difference,” said Herbert thoughtfully.
Mrs. Heywood clasped her son’s arm. There was a tremulous light in her eyes and a great emotion in her voice.
“Herbert, I am an old woman and your mother. Sit down and let me talk to you as I did in the old days when you were my small boy before a nursery fire.”
Herbert smiled at her; all the gloom had left his face.
“All right, mother.... By Jove, and I never guessed. And yet I ought to have guessed. Things have been—different—lately.”
He sat down on a hassock near the old lady with his knees tucked up. She sat down, too, and stretched out a trembling hand to touch his hair.
“Once upon a time, Herbert, there was a young man and a young woman who loved each other very dearly.”
Herbert looked up and smiled at her.
“Are you sure, mother?”
“Perfectly sure. Then they married.”
“And lived happily ever after? I bet they didn’t!”
“No, not quite happily, because this is different from the fairy tales. ... After a time the husband began to think too much about his work, while the wife stayed at home and thought too much about herself.”
“It’s a stale old yarn,” said Herbert. “What happened then?”
“By degrees the wife began to think she hated her husband, because although he gave her little luxuries and pretty clothes, and all the things that pleasedhim, he never gave her the thingshewanted.”
“What was that?” asked Herbert.
“It was a magic charm to make her forget herself.”
“Well, magic charms aren’t easy to find,” said Herbert.
“No.... But at last she went out to find it herself. And while she was away the husband came home and missed her.”
“Poor devil!” said Herbert. “Of course he did.”
“Being a man,” said Mrs. Heywood, giving a queer little laugh, “he stayed at home more than he used to do, and then complained that he was left too much alone. Just like his wife had complained.”
“Well, hang it all,” said Herbert, “she ought to have stayed with him.”
“But then she wouldn’t have found the magic charm,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Don’t you see?... And she would have withered and withered away until there was nothing left of her, and the husband would have been quite alone—forever.”
“Think so?” said Herbert very thoughtfully. “D’you think it would have been as bad as that?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I’m sure of it.”
“Well, what did happen?” asked Herbert. “Did she find the magic charm? It wasn’t a widow in distress, was it? Or Social Reform humbug?”
“No,” said Mrs. Heywood; “that gave her a new interest in life because it helped her to forget herself, some of her own little worries, some of her brooding thoughts. But a good fairy who was looking after her worked another kind of magic.... Herbert I It’s the best magic for unhappy women and unhappy homes, and it has been worked for you. Oh, my dear, you ought to be very thankful.”
“Yes,” said Herbert, scratching his head. “Yes, I suppose so. But what’s the moral of the tale, mother? I’m hanged if I see.”
Mrs. Heywood put her hand on her son’s shoulder, as he sat on the hassock by her chair.
“It’s a moral told by an old woman who watched these two from the very beginning. A husband mustn’t expect his wife to stay at home for ever. The home isn’t big enough, Herbert. There’s the great world outside calling to her, calling, calling. The walls of a little fiat like this are too narrow for the spirit and heart. If he keeps her there she either pines and dies, or else——”
“What?” asked Herbert.
“Escapes, my dear,” said the old lady very solemnly.
Herbert drew a deep, quivering breath.
“Then,” said Mrs. Heywood, “nothing in the world can call her back—except——”
“Except what?”
“A little child.”
Herbert got up from the hassock and clasped the mantelshelf, and spoke in a low, humble, grateful voice.
“Thank God, Clare has been called back!” he said.
Mrs. Heywood rose from her chair also, and caught hold of her son’s sleeve.
“Yes,” she said, “yes. But even now she will want to spread her wings a little. She must take short flights, Herbert, even now. She must wing her way out to the big world at times. You will remember that, won’t you?”
“I’ll try to remember,” said Herbert. He bent his head over his hands on the mantelshelf. “I’ve been selfish,” he said. “Blinded with selfishness and self-conceit. God forgive me.”